The present invention is directed to the use of handheld scanners as a means of gathering information. In general, handheld scanners can be classified as general purpose or special purpose. Most handheld scanners used for acquiring information from printed media are directed to general purpose uses, so that they can read and store a variety of different types of image information designed for various applications. Recent developments directed to these general purpose scanners concern themselves with eliminating distortion before sending images for processing on to other devices. Because of storage requirements of images, most scanners utilize plug-in modules to store images, or are limited to small numbers of images before transmission is necessary. The other category of handheld scanners is directed to the scanning of very specific types of images to provided a particular form of information. The best known type of scanner in this category is a bar-code scanner, which might be used to obtain the identification of a product which carries the bar code image, for instance to provide inventory control and/or pricing information.
This invention is directed to a more special-purpose type of scanner system which comprises the combination of a handheld scanner and associated information retrieval software. The scanner is capable of scanning a line of information, such as text or barcoded data, and presenting that information to the companion information retrieval software. In the case of scanned text, an image of the text can first be presented to an on-board OCR engine, allowing user display and verification before the information is provided to the information retrieval software. In the case of barcoded data, an image of the data can be presented to decoding software which converts the image into numeric or alphanumeric data before presentation to the information retrieval software.
One particular application of the present invention is the scanning of an address, or other identification, of a site that is accessible via a communications network such as the Internet, and subsequent connection of a communications device to that site. To this end, the invention relates to method of scanning, decoding, storage and transmission of connection information to a communications agent, for connection to a site identified by the scanned data. In one aspect thereof, the invention relates to a system comprising the combination of scanner, image decoding technology, liquid crystal display and wireless communication embodied in a handheld apparatus for the purpose of scanning one line of data, processing the scanned image with the decoding technology and immediately displaying information relating to the scanned data on the LCD panel for user viewing. The system of the invention can utilize the information obtained by the handheld scanner to communicate via the Internet, e.g. through a browser program, for the retrieval of documents in the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the eXtended Markup Language (XML), the Wireless Markup Language (WML), the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), or other such information.
The objective of this invention contemplates a handheld device that scans a line of information in the form of Internet URL""s, Internet protocol addresses, Internet e-mail addresses, FTP sites, USENET news group addresses, DNS addresses, bar-coded product identifications, etc., as they occur in printed media. Scanned image data is processed with decoding technology, and can be displayed for user verification where appropriate. The device utilizes the scanned information to connect to the Internet, to send/retrieve HTML, XML, WML or VRML documents, e-mail messages, USENET news, Java applets, ActiveX documents, Active Server Pages (ASP) or file transfers to/from the Internet location decoded by the handheld scanner. Alternatively, the scanned information can be used to retrieve data which is stored in the handheld scanner itself, or in another component of the system that is associated with the handheld scanner.